Hi folks, I have a small, maybe newbie, question concerning date operations. The follwing snippet date1 = "2005-11-20"; date2 = "2005-11-17"; difftime(date1, date2) results in "Time difference of 3 days". How can I extract just the numerical value 3? As a workaround I apply mean() on the result which gives me just a numerical value. Thanks a lot, Christian
Christian Neumann wrote:> Hi folks, > > I have a small, maybe newbie, question concerning date operations. > The follwing snippet > > date1 = "2005-11-20"; > date2 = "2005-11-17"; > difftime(date1, date2) > > results in "Time difference of 3 days". How can I extract just the > numerical value 3? > As a workaround I apply mean() on the result which gives me just a > numerical value.If you want to get one thing _as_ another the R-ish solution is nearly always to do as.another(oneThing). You want it numeric? You got it! > date1 = "2005-11-20"; > date2 = "2005-11-17"; > difftime(date1, date2) Time difference of 3 days > as.numeric(difftime(date1, date2)) [1] 3 Barry
This was just discussed two days ago: https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2006-January/084453.html On 1/13/06, Christian Neumann <christian.neumann at ai.wu-wien.ac.at> wrote:> Hi folks, > > I have a small, maybe newbie, question concerning date operations. > The follwing snippet > > date1 = "2005-11-20"; > date2 = "2005-11-17"; > difftime(date1, date2) > > results in "Time difference of 3 days". How can I extract just the > numerical value 3? > As a workaround I apply mean() on the result which gives me just a > numerical value. > > Thanks a lot, > > Christian > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >
just try as.numeric(difftime(date1, date2)) Best, Dimitris ---- Dimitris Rizopoulos Ph.D. Student Biostatistical Centre School of Public Health Catholic University of Leuven Address: Kapucijnenvoer 35, Leuven, Belgium Tel: +32/(0)16/336899 Fax: +32/(0)16/337015 Web: http://www.med.kuleuven.be/biostat/ http://www.student.kuleuven.be/~m0390867/dimitris.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christian Neumann" <christian.neumann at ai.wu-wien.ac.at> To: <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch> Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 2:05 PM Subject: [R] Getting the numeric value of difftime> Hi folks, > > I have a small, maybe newbie, question concerning date operations. > The follwing snippet > > date1 = "2005-11-20"; > date2 = "2005-11-17"; > difftime(date1, date2) > > results in "Time difference of 3 days". How can I extract just the > numerical value 3? > As a workaround I apply mean() on the result which gives me just a > numerical value. > > Thanks a lot, > > Christian > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm